


Five Things That Never Happened in Hunter x Hunter

by apologeticallybourgeois



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:54:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24237619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apologeticallybourgeois/pseuds/apologeticallybourgeois
Summary: When he could, Killua spent the first and final days of his leave exactly the same way: he rose just after dawn, worked out, took a lengthy shower, and dressed in his best suit.(Five glimpses of five universes, of varying degrees of departure from canon.)
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck, Komugi/Meruem, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	1. all some children do is learn

**Author's Note:**

> I choose not to use archive warnings for my own reasons, and I'm not going to get mad at people not wanting to read my stories because they're wary of potential triggers - your mental health comes first! I'll put content notes at **the end of each chapter**.
> 
> Chapter titles are taken from song lyrics.

When he could, Killua spent the first and final days of his leave exactly the same way: he rose just after dawn, worked out, took a lengthy shower, and dressed in his best suit. On the way to the train station, he bought a sandwich and an intensely sweet concoction from Cafe de Felicia, which he carried while humming whatever tune was stuck in his head for the moment. Less than half an hour later, he emerged from the exit of his train stop and walked across a park to the Nowell Medical Centre for Survivors of Conflict (“the Nowell”, when fondly named). 

There, Killua dutifully registered himself as a visitor before making a beeline for the Residential Care building, always sparing a coin — never a candle — for the Soldier’s Altar along the way. All except the newest staff members recognised him, and knew to get out of his way in the morning.

It wasn’t wise for someone in Killua’s line of work to have predictable habits, so it was just as well that there was an unspoken agreement among the Zoldycks’ few remaining enemies not to disrupt his ritual. The last time someone tried to assassinate him on his way to the Nowell, he’d gotten extremely cranky and impossibly murderous. The only reason why even a handful of the Graydon Family survived was because Killua wanted to make an example out of them, and he needed at least one living person to spread the word: _leave me the fuck alone_.

Alluka knew this, because she’d been a witness to the abrupt left-turn in Killua’s life since the night his call tumbled her out of sleep into a terrible new world. He was coming home, Killua had said, and so was Gon — if Gon survived the effects of the neural bomb long enough. She was only just wrapping up her internship in the Neurology department at the Nowell then, still raw enough to cry over every other patient. But she remembered feeling all her tears drying up into resolve that night, because Killua needed her to be a doctor, not just his sister. So she had to be strong.

Killua was decidedly unsuitable for human interaction until lunchtime, so Alluka could temporarily consign him to a corner of her mind and focus on her clinic hours. His visits usually coincided with Knov’s follow-up appointments, which also meant the pleasure of Morel’s company and his baritone laugh. Morel kept up a light, casual banter while watching her examining Knov, and Alluka didn’t know if Knov knew and was just ignoring it, but she would bet her considerable trust fund that Morel could recall with reasonable accuracy everything she’d ever said to Knov. It was probably as instinctive as breathing, them watching each other’s backs. They were teammates in wartime, and their war hadn’t ended with the armistice.

Gon had been a soldier. Killua was embedded in his squad as a private contractor — a polite term for “mercenary”, because you needed to wipe the blood off an immoral war when drawing up contracts and press releases. Somehow, despite everything, they became best friends and then— well. Alluka still had the photos from the engagement party Gon’s squadmates threw for them at the camp. If they ever dreamed of being anything other than fighters together, even if it’s just one cheerfully haranguing the other into taking better care of himself, the way Morel did with Knov, they never got to make a go of it.

Today, Dr. Yorkshire poked her head into Alluka’s examination room just before lunch and demanded to know where the case files were for the NGL children.

“Um,” Alluka said, because she never got over being terrified of Cheadle Yorkshire and her beady, all-seeing eyes, “Dr. Paladinight keyed in everything into the system. Are the servers not updated yet?”

Over Yorkshire’s shoulder, she caught a harried-looking Leorio gesticulating fiercely while talking into his phone. His cheap tie was badly askew. Trouble in paradise again, then. Because Alluka liked to think of herself as a mostly-good person, she kept her mouth zipped and very carefully made sure her gaze didn’t wander to him while Yorkshire was talking.

“Oh, for god’s sakes.” Dr. Yorkshire threw up her hands with a disgusted sniff. “Who knows where the case files are now, if they even saved properly? I have a grandmother younger than our computer system. My grandmother probably _programmed_ our system.”

Alluka shrank back in her chair, subtly rolling it further behind the desk. “I’ll call tech support.”

The unexpected detour made her late, which she relayed in a series of frantic texts to her brother, but she knew Killua wouldn’t mind. She sprinted to Residential Care anyway, and took a moment to wipe the sweat off her brows and fan herself before knocking on the door to Room 405. A muffled “come in!” greeted her almost immediately — which meant, damn it, that Killua probably heard her panting for breath.

No expense was spared for Gon’s room. The Nowell had always prioritised patients over profit, but Killua’s money was apparent in the little things: while every room in Residential Care had large, sunlit windows, Gon’s overlooked the oak tree in the garden where songbirds sought refuge from the dense urban sprawl around the hospital. A pot of lavender, lovingly maintained by the orderlies and Mito Freecss, occupied the sunniest windowsill. A small pantry nook with a kettle and a microwave oven was an extra bit of luxury tucked into a corner. Gon’s bed had its own custom-made sheets and, next to it, a comfortable armchair where a visitor might sit for hours.

It almost made up for the soft, constant hum and beeps of the machinery monitoring every possible aspect of Gon’s body: his oxygen rate, his heartbeat, his brain activity — everything that told Alluka, from the first time she read Gon’s charts, that Gon might never wake up.

Killua was sitting on the bed when Alluka entered, holding Gon’s hand between his. He looked up at her briefly, smiled, and turned back to give Gon a soft kiss on the forehead. Alluka frowned, watching him. Her brother had always tended towards willowy rather than bulky, but it looked like he lost a little weight. She hadn’t noticed. His suit didn’t fit quite right anymore, a dead giveaway; Killua had browbeaten the family tailor into sewing it to his very exact specifications. It had to be perfect. He was going to get married in it, before— before everything.

Gon’s dress uniform was still hanging in its dust cover in his half of Killua’s wardrobe, with the rest of his clothes sealed in vacuum bags and stacked neatly underneath. His uniform probably smelled like a cedar sawmill by now; Killua replenished the moth repellent every three months like clockwork.

“Ready for lunch?” Alluka asked, because the other words crowding her head weren’t the kind you should say to your big brother when he was hurting. Even if he already knew what you were going to say. The Zoldyck children were taught that kindness was a fiction, but so were most stories anyway, and you still needed a happily-ever-after or two to sustain you through the night.

“Sure, let’s go to that ramen joint we like,” Killua agreed easily, slinging himself off the bed. “Hey, Mito invited us to dinner tonight — you free? She said that if I’m going to be off doing dreadful hush-hush nonsense during my birthday, we should celebrate early.”

Alluka realised, with a pang, that her brother was only just shy of thirty. He wasn’t supposed to already be waiting for the love of his life to die.

“Y-yeah, I can make it.” She slipped her arm around his, hugging it to her body. Killua always made her feel safe and accepted, and what she owed him went beyond the usual debts expected and forgiven between siblings. And there would always be a part of her, trained by Silva Zoldyck, that calculated the value of everyone and every favour owed — even if her metrics weren’t the same as his.

Alluka leaned her head against Killua’s shoulder and pasted a smile on her face. “You’re buying me lunch, okay?”

Later, at the end of her shift, Alluka slipped back into Gon’s room. The sunset painted the walls in swathes of gold and red, and brought out what remained of the warm hue in Gon’s skin. He was so pale now, washed out. She checked his feeding tube by rote, and scanned the updated charts. Despite the best efforts of the physical therapists, Gon had lost a lot of muscle tone. He was going to be _so_ furious about it when he woke up. If he ever woke up.

Gon likely wasn’t going to make it. There was a sliver of a chance, if only they could get the best specialists in the world, and the newest and most promising research. And for that they needed a lot of money, quickly, well beyond the amount Killua could hope to earn before Gon lost too much time. Certainly it was out of reach of the Nowell, its coffers funded by the bequests of veterans, scraped together from what little pension they had, and the occasional donation from philanthropists.

She already made a decision on what to do about it; she just needed one last push of courage. Alluka took out her phone and dialled a number by memory, watching the shadows cast by Gon’s unexpectedly beautiful lashes.

“What?” Milluki grunted into her ear.

She’d been hoping for one of the butlers, but no such luck. “It’s Alluka. I’d like to speak to Father, please.”

There was a long silence. She waited, furious and scared. If Milluki hung up, if he brought up Nanika, if he called her “brother” — _again_ , even after Killua made him stop — she was going to beat him in the head with his own sex dolls.

“One minute,” Milluki finally said, and she heard him putting down the headset and calling for Father to come to the phone.

Father had refused to help Gon, telling Killua to move on from him, but maybe it would be different if she was the one to ask. If she promised to return to the fold. Killua was going to hit the roof; Alluka was supposed to be the one who got away, the one who was supposed to be free of their family’s bloody legacy.

She was raised a Zoldyck though, like he was, and Alluka knew intimately that everything had a price that must be paid. Killua paid hers, in more ways than one, for her to be able to go to medical school and earn a living without ever having to use a weapon. For her dreams to come true.

“Alluka, daughter,” her father rumbled down the phone. “I’ve been expecting your call.”

She gritted her teeth. If nothing else — even if the end may yet be years away — Silva Zoldyck wasn’t going to be the head of the family forever.

“I have a favour to ask,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: traumatic, life-threatening injury; implied transphobia.
> 
> It was only after I finished writing this that I realised Killua is basically John Wick in this universe. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. your clever boy disguises

“You don’t call, you don’t write, you won’t let me have your email,” Leorio said, falling into step next to Kurapika, tucking her sunglasses into the inner pocket of her jacket. She flicked the side of his face. “Are you going to check your new Zodiac email at least?”

Kurapika sniffed. He didn’t even bother swatting her hand away, the bastard. “No.”

“Liar,” she said sweetly. “You know Cheadle will have your balls if you ghost her.”

Behind them, the rest of the Zodiacs were dispersing after the meeting, some faster than others. Saiyu had already bolted for god knows where, while Cheadle and Mizaistom were deep in a private conversation that didn’t appear to welcome any interruption. Kanzai looked like he was gearing up to do it anyway.

“Hey,” Leorio said, sending a sidelong smile Kurapika’s way, “now that you’re here, let’s check out my new lab.”

Kurapika opened his mouth for a reflexive retort, closed it again after the tiniest of pauses, and went red all the way to his blond roots. It was _fascinating_ watching his brain work in real time, even if it was for something that didn’t exactly require more than a basic understanding of social interaction.

She crowded him against the door as soon as it closed behind them, pressing his shoulders into the painted wood with her hands as she took his mouth. He huffed something that might’ve been a laugh and kissed back, moving with the slow grind of her body against his, and he tasted of weariness and a sharp, metallic tang. Leorio was suddenly greedy for every part of him, even the parts she knew he’d never want to share with her, and she let herself gorge on his wet mouth, the hair tickling her face, his damnably strong arms like iron bars around her waist, the wool-clad thigh he’d insinuated between her legs and rubbing up where she was taut and wanting.

He shoved her forward when he felt her starting to undo the buttons on her blouse. They navigated blindly around the room — or at least _she_ was, but she knew that Kurapika wouldn’t let her blunder into something injurious, not now — until she felt the hard edge of a table against the back of her thighs. Pushing him back, she wriggled out of her suit jacket and flung it away, hearing something tumble with a crash onto the floor.

Kurapika was breathing hard now, his hands impatiently shoving up her skirt and pulling her panties down. There was never anything in-between for him: he was either uninterested and unmoved, or 150% revved-up and ready to tear her clothes off to get at what she placed on offer. He pushed his fingers into her dry and she yowled, kneeing him in the meat of his thigh.

“Sorry,” he murmured, sounding genuinely stricken. Funny, how he’d apologise for this and nothing else. He licked his fingers and slid them back in her, and oh, that felt so much better; and she moaned nonsense into his neck as he slicked her up and got her ready for his cock. His lashes fluttered against her hair like trapped butterflies, and she felt his mouth kiss the shell of her ear. He smelled of sweat now, under the fine linen of his shirt.

Evening had fallen while the Zodiacs talked and argued. She could barely see his face in the ambient light glowing from the windows, bathing them in neon and shadows. They hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights; she thought Kurapika might actually prefer it like this, because Kurapika trusting her didn’t always translate to wanting himself to be known to her.

Leorio reached into the pocket of her skirt and threw a condom at him, hoisting herself onto the table. She heard him unzip, the crinkle of the foil wrapping, and his unsteady heartbeat. There was a sudden jar of double vision, a memory of the last time they did this overlaid with the reality of now as she felt his knuckles brushing the soft, vulnerable skin on the inside of her thighs.

She breathed out, letting the memory dissolve in her mind. They were having a fuck in the Hunter Association HQ, not a dingy bed in a Yorknew slum, and she wasn’t keeping secrets from him anymore. She let her weight rest on the palms of her hand, braced against the table, pushing back as he thrust in with a relieved, almost inaudible groan.

Sex had always come easily to Leorio; she was happy to lean into the physicality of it, the delight of finding a partner who felt good about making her feel good, and she threw herself into learning how to get what she wanted and how to give back in return. Being with a beautiful person was nothing like the Hunter Exam, or medical studies — it was just about freely loving what they wanted to share with her, even if only for the night.

Kurapika was difficult to love, even at the best of times, but that wasn’t what this was about, right here and right now. It was the flex of his muscles under his clothes as her heels dug into his back, seeking leverage, and the way he pulled her bra aside to mouth rapaciously at her breasts. It was the salt of his skin, the sweat soaking his hair and her fingers where she pulled at the strands. It was the banked power behind the snap of his hips, how he moaned her name when he came, the tight screws in his head loosening all at once.

“Darling,” she said, tender and quivering, and it was about this, too: how he knew exactly what she wanted, and he went his knees for her, his mouth at the apex of her legs and working her over. Until she came, hard, her entire body purring with satisfaction.

She grabbed his lapels and reeled him in for a kiss after, because damn it, she wanted one. Kurapika didn’t disengage quite as fast as she expected but pulled away far too soon regardless, disposing of the condom and zipping up his pants. Leorio sighed and put herself to rights too, and tried to remember where the nearest bathroom was.

“I’m adding new underwear to your tab,” she grumbled. “Now that we’re both part of the Zodiacs, am I going to see you more often? At least buy me a beer, you cheapskate.”

She didn’t need to see his face to sense the sudden tension in Kurapika’s body, the awful things she was sure was about to come out of his mouth. He jerked away from her, a clipped two-step retreat, and she flailed for the switch on a nearby desk lamp — he was spoiling for a fight, and she was at a disadvantage as it was even before having to duke it out in the dark.

Kurapika blinked at the sudden bath of orange light, but the hard line of his mouth stiffened even more. “It’s not as if you’ve ever been short of company,” he said harshly. “We agreed, didn’t we? No promises. You’re not my girlfriend. We’re not dating—”

“Shut the fuck up, you sanctimonious idiot,” she yelled, humiliated and furious. To her horror, she felt wetness gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I know what we promised, all right? I was there when it happened. But I miss my _friend_. You’re my friend and I’m always going to be yours, you fucker, can’t I want that?”

He stared at her, shocked into silence. Leorio tamped down hard the urge to throw the lamp at his stupid, pretty face, and turned away to find her jacket. It was useless to be angry at Kurapika for being who he was. What was the point of screaming at a man who was willing to sacrifice essential parts of himself — like his goddamn life, shit, years and years of it as a trade-off — for the sake of vengeance? Nothing she could say or do would make a dent in his armour, not for all the wishes in the world.

It was her turn to be shocked, then, when his hand gripped her arm, pulling her around so they were face to face, again. His expression was unreadable, but he lowered his eyes and murmured, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that.”

There were many, far too many things rattling in her brain, but what she actually said was, “Two apologies in one night from _you_? It’s a fucking miracle.”

Kurapika sighed. “Please accept my apology.”

“No,” she said, just to be petty, but she was sure he read the hug she foisted on him for what it was: forgiveness and an acceptance of terms. He returned the embrace without reservation, wonder of wonders, and she let herself go soft and pliant, curving around his body.

What she wouldn’t give for a girl friend to talk to, Leorio thought. Well, she amended, someone who wasn’t Gon. She wasn’t sure whether Gon was indifferent or actively ambivalent about it — Gon certainly hadn’t cared when addressed as a boy — but Gon hadn’t been raised A Girl the way Leorio was expected to be anyway. No help there, not for her.

Did Gon find _anyone_ attractive? Leorio fell in and out of lust regularly, and fell in love a few times. The love stuck around even when the people didn’t, secreted away in her heart forever like letters in a memory chest. She didn’t know whether meeting Gon, Killua, and Kurapika at the age of 19 set her up for life to worry after self-destructive over-achievers, and seeded a need in her to ease their hurts, or if they added the fuel to fed the fire Pietro’s death left behind. 

It was far too late to be asking questions about why she was who she was. She just had to live with it, and there was too much she wanted to get done — and the road ahead was lined with treacherous hoops she had to jump through — to always be bitter about what she might never have.

“You’re not wearing lipstick today,” Kurapika said into the hush. He thumbed gently at her lips.

She smiled, remembering waxy smears of velveteen-red all over his thighs. “Sometimes, I do plan ahead,” she said, and waited for him to catch up.

“ _Leorio_ ,” he groaned, hilariously censorious.

She kissed his cheek, just under his zygomatic arch, letting it linger soft and easy. Odd, that it was this gesture that felt unbearably intimate, after everything else they did tonight. Kurapika looked like he might be thinking the same thing, so she tucked his hand in hers and said, before he could run away again, “We need to talk about the expedition.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: always a different gender; pining; explicit sexual content.
> 
> If you will, consider this with me: _soft butch Gon_. Thank you.


	3. a king is only a man

_Day 122_

“We’re here!” Gon shrieked in her ear, almost shoving them headlong into the taped-up glass as she threw her arms around Killua’s neck. 

“I see it,” Killua breathed. Together, they plastered their faces against the window of the airship, hungry for the sight of their destination, after so long. Below them, the pristine water of Dolle Harbour glistened blue in the sun, dotted with the wreckage of ships from Before. Almost to their goal now, just a voyage away.

“It looks just like how I remembered,” Gon said. She pointed at the weathered buildings lined up in rows like books on a shelf. “Look, that’s where Yukie-san’s house is.”

“I hope she’s still around,” said Killua. “How old was she?”

Gon’s smile was dazzling. “She’ll be there. She promised she’ll have a room free for me.”

_Day 148_

The room Yukie-san set aside for Gon was big enough for a double bed and not much else, so Gon and Killua spent most of their time outdoors. Gon browned rapidly under the seaside sun while Killua, raised on a curriculum that included ingesting poisons and experimental concoctions, stayed pale and ghost-like.

They ran errands for Yukie-san, hopping over crumbling ruins to deliver herbal tonics and sardonic advice. They returned with what little payment her clients could eke out: eggs and freshly-slaughtered poultry, handfuls of rice and other grains, the occasional ring or bracelet given with tears. The Kukan’yu Kingdom was spared of much of the Five Plagues, but that didn’t mean its fate was entirely its own; the loss of trade with the rest of the world meant impoverishment for everyone, including — eventually — the wealthy barons of Zaban City.

Gon scampered down to the wharf every morning to ask about the ship to Whale Island. She usually returned with a catch of small, silver-scaled fish for lunch but nothing else. About two weeks into their arrival at Dolle Harbour, a fisher plying the deep waters returned with news that the _Kaijinmaru_ was grounded somewhere near Rokario for repairs. There were no updates since. Kukan’yu was cut off from what remained of the global radio network, and news was passed from one seafarer to another.

The fisherfolk smiled indulgently at Gon, recognised her as one of their own, and readily folded her into their lives. Gon would borrow Old Masu’s boat when his joints hurt too badly to go out to sea, splitting her catch with him. She was angler more than anything else, and her catch numbered in the handfuls rather than dozens, but what she brought back to Yukie-san’s kitchen was enough to feed all three of them and the cat.

Killua wrote back to her father when one of his falcons found her, a short missive clipped to its leg. She burned his message after, because being a Zoldyck meant never letting your guard down.

“Maybe we should’ve taken that pervert Notero’s offer,” Killua said just the once, when they sat on the pier watching the sunset. “Negotiate for the use of his airship.”

Gon shook her head, smiling. Her hair was growing long, almost to her shoulders. “He wouldn’t be able to navigate to Whale Island without the coordinates, and I can’t pilot an airship,” she said. “It’s okay, we’ll wait.”

_Day 179_

Sometimes they walked up to the Lone Pine Tree when Yukie-san decided to pick mushrooms and herbs. A family of Kiriko once lived there, but the Second Plague wiped them out. Only the ashes of a former log cabin and a disused well remained to bear testimony of their lives here, and Yukie-san’s stories. The prayer beads Yukie-san wore around her neck clacked as they walked, stopping every so often for the old woman to point out this and that.

“They were the sweetest couple you could ever meet,” Yukie-san said of the Kiriko-Who-Were, her wrinkled face breaking out into a wistful smile. “The entire family was utterly devoted to each other. That was what got them in the end, unfortunately. The father got sick first, and then the mother, and their children decided to stay to look after them. We had to burn the house down with their bodies before we could give them a proper burial.”

Yukie-san usually shooed them away while she looked for what she needed, claiming that they hindered more than they helped. It left Gon and Killua free to race up the enormous pine tree and spend hours among the boughs, daring each other to ever more foolhardy feats until Yukie-san yelled at them to get down. It seemed to settle some of the restlessness quivering under Gon’s skin, at least temporarily.

While Yukie-san braised mushrooms and burdock in the fading afternoon light, they trained together in the alley behind her kitchen, watched by curious children. Killua thought she would always, for the rest of her life, associate contentment with the golden hue of Gon’s skin as they sweated in the heat, and the smell of mushroom stew rising above smoke and sewage.

“You two would have made good Hunters,” Yukie-san had said, doling out generous bowls of rice and stew. Her cat dozed under the table, already fed ahead of the humans’ dinner. “Such a pity that’s all gone now.”

“My father was a Hunter — _is_ still a Hunter, I guess, if he’s alive,” Gon offered, seemingly unbothered by his likely death. “I never knew him or my mother. My aunt raised me since I was a baby.”

Yukie-san clicked her tongue, but didn’t say anything else. That night, Gon took out the case with the precious vaccine she’d fought for on Greed Island and stared at it for a long time, uncharacteristically quiet. Killua held her tongue, keeping a discreet eye on Gon while she braided her hair for bedtime. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know what was always on the forefront of Gon’s mind.

Killua dreamed of Biscuit Krueger and the way she bled out onto the sands of Soufrabi, still ferociously unwilling to accept the limitations of her body. She had been strong once, before the Fourth Plague sapped her strength and took away most of her abilities. Bisky had enough left to teach them everything they needed to survive, which she did to her detriment, and it was a debt they never had a chance to repay.

_Day 193_

“It’s your cake,” Killua protested, pushing the plate back to Gon.

Gon fiddled awkwardly with her fork. “You know I don’t really like sweet things,” she said. “But you do, Killua, so you can have it.”

Yukie-san had taken her precious stash of sugar and cocoa to the baker to give Gon a proper birthday cake, saying that all food needed to be eaten before it went bad anyway. Killua had already demolished her share of the rich, gooey treat, and Gon went around giving slices to the neighbours, sealing her in their affections forever. 

The last time Killua tasted a pastry was the day she left Kukuroo Mountain, and the experience was rather ruined by her mother’s melodramatic wailing. She gladly ate more of Gon’s cake, letting its syrupy deliciousness dissolve on her tongue.

“Happy sixteenth,” Killua murmured to Gon and kissed on the corner of her mouth, daringly tender. Gon flushed a bright, brick-red, and muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

Something in Killua’s chest squeezed hard within her ribcage, sweetly painful.

Later, she lounged in sugar-filled satisfaction and watched Yukie-san carefully cutting Gon’s hair, the dark, lustrous locks falling in hanks at their feet. Gon had been similarly shorn the first time they met, but she didn’t look the same: her face had grown out of its childhood roundness, her limbs more sinewy and defined.

“Say, Killua,” Gon said, suddenly, “do you think Leorio and Kurapika are all right?”

“Kurapika will kill anyone who tries to mess with them,” Killua said, yawning. “Leorio’s probably a real doctor by now.”

“Ha, that’s right,” Gon agreed easily, brushing bits of hair from her face. She turned her head towards the east window, facing the wharf — an unconscious gesture, Killua thought, but one that revealed volumes.

_Day 223_

They slept with the windows open to catch the night breeze, a necessity in Kukan’yu’s hot, humid summers. Killua had never gotten used to the heat, and she didn’t think Gon much liked it either. The blankets were long kicked to the foot of their shared bed, though always carefully folded in the morning.

Tomorrow would be the last morning they were to spend in Yukie-san’s house — if all went well, if the _Kaijinmaru_ truly was on her way to Dolle Harbour. They stayed awake far into the night, unable to sleep, whispering nonsense to each other. Killua could feel the thrum of Gon’s excitement in the restive movements of her body, the curl of her toes against Killua’s calves.

Gon was going home, soon. Killua tried hard to match her joy, but— she had a choice to make, one she’d been putting off since her father’s last letter and its unambiguous order.

Warm fingers closed around her wrist, pulling her out of her thoughts. Gon’s face was a bare suggestion of lines in the dark, but she thought she knew the exact expression on it: a quizzical stare, imbued with good-natured concern.

Sure enough: “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Killua thought about it, wrestling with an unfortunate attack of conscience, and immediately amended her instinctive denial, “It’s just that— I don’t know where I’ll be going next from here.”

“Oh.” Gon’s warmth drew closer, until Killua could feel the puffs of her breath. “I never actually asked, did I? Do you want to come home with me?”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Killua breathed out, unwilling to say it too loudly for fate to intervene. It felt like a sacred confession, to be left at an altar with a sacrifice as payment.

“I don’t want to leave you either.” Gon’s arms slid around Killua, their bodies curving automatically into a hug. She said, in a small voice, “I love you, Killua.”

She didn’t let herself second-guess and sabotage the moment — for once, she told herself fiercely — and leaned into Gon’s embrace, finding Gon’s mouth with the familiarity of hours of observation. They kissed, softly at first, slowly easing into something hotter, laden with promise. It scorched Killua from the inside, burned away the doubts that lingered like cobwebs in her mind. It felt inevitable.

“I’ll come home with you,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: always a different gender; post-apocalyptic; illness; death; first love.
> 
> I named the Quizzing Lady after her voice actor. Also, is there anything more foundational in HxH than Gon's and Killua's love for each other? However one may define it.


	4. the sky is a neighbourhood

“Go go _go_!”

“That harridan will be the death of me,” muttered someone behind Meruem’s back. He didn’t bother looking back to confirm who it was; only one person in their newly-graduated training crew delighted in provoking her for little to no profit.

“I heard that, Ensign Zoldyck,” Captain Krueger yelled over the comms. “I’ll deal with your insubordinate ass later, the rest of you: get _your_ asses in gear. Initiating drop in four… three… two… one—”

With a shriek of metal gears, the _Aesthete_ opened its bay doors, dumping its cargo into orbit around Neo-Gorteau. The planet was dusty and barren below them, Ming Jol-ik’s long-abandoned terraforming machines visible but lifeless on its surface. Meruem flicked on his suit’s jets, concentrating on the data scrolling down his visor’s screen.

In theory, the orbital jump was one of the easier assessment tests, given that not even Krueger was insane enough to make a group of ensigns do a full jump; instead, their assigned target was the aging observation platform high in Neo-Gorteau’s mesosphere. In practice, they were fighting gravitational pull and atmospheric friction while making split-second decisions based on their suit’s sensor feed and data transmitted from the _Aesthete_. Distantly, he heard Bine’s shout of alarm over the shared comms line — which he ignored. If Bine deserved to survive, he’d save himself.

Annoyingly, despite being held up by Bine’s incompetence, Zoldyck was first to land on their target, followed closely by Meruem. He tipped his helmet to Zoldyck as his boots magnetised themselves to the platform; he got a similar helmet-tip back. Freecss landed with a solid thump, right next to Zoldyck, and they immediately turned to each other to gossip through gestures and random words that came in disjointed bursts over comms. Siberia was next, landing in a cat-like crouch, and Bine and McMahon were a distant last.

“Adequate,” Krueger sniffed. “All right, you have your assignments — I’m not wasting a trip out here just to watch a bunch of greenhorns parachute down a planet. You have two Standard hours to complete the maintenance check.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Meruem said, joining the servile chorus around him, the words still sour on his tongue even after three years in the Academy. He unshouldered his pack, magnetising it to the platform’s surface.

“If any of you lose your tools, you’re sitting through Cheadle’s lecture on space STIs as punishment,” Krueger said, the words slightly muffled by what sounded like a sip of coffee. “See you in two hours, children.”

***

_Zodiac II_ was originally intended to orbit around a dwarf star in the NGL system instead of Neo-Gorteau, but the war between the Chimera Empire and the Planetary Union laid everything in the sector into inhabitable waste. After Admiral Netero stabbed a metaphorical sword through Meruem’s grandfather and pushed the Empire to the brink of extinction, sacrificing himself and the infamous _Kannon_ in the process, Meruem’s mother sued for peace. The price the Empire paid for a treaty was monetary compensation and integration. The price Meruem’s mother paid was her life, taken by her own hand while a mob bayed outside the palace doors to bloodily depose an unpopular monarch. 

His first act as Emperor-in-Waiting was to order the mob leaders killed and displayed on pikes outside the palace. The Planetary Union’s Enforcement Division came calling two days later. He hadn’t known then, as a child, what it meant to have lost the privileges of power; he hadn’t grasped that he no longer had an Empire to rule. His Royal Guards took the fall for his impetuousness, kept their silence in Union court, and went to prison while he stayed free.

Meruem had inherited his mother’s memories, transferred while she lay dying, and occasionally her shame burned in him still. It sparked in painful slivers through his chest as he walked the corridors of _Zodiac II_ , knowing that the wealth of the erstwhile Chimera Empire paid for the construction of the space station. He couldn’t regret her death, not with the knowledge that she thought herself too weak for survival, and not with her voice now forever a part of the ancestral memories passed down in an unbroken line.

His instructors at the Academy had been kind, after a fashion, but unsympathetic. After disciplining Meruem for an outburst that came on the heels of long-simmering resentment, Commander Kite scrutinised him over a tense, silent moment and said, “Your namesake shouldn’t have started a war because he thought we were too weak to resist, and then compounded his error by ignoring the necessity of information-gathering. For his mistakes, we all paid in blood. I had hoped you didn’t inherit his predisposition of thinking himself always in the right.”

Kite was a veteran of the war, returned alive in a body that had to be rebuilt from literal scraps. He was also scrupulously fair as an instructor, so much so that Meruem sometimes forgot Kite had cause to exact vengeance from Meruem’s kin, had the Commander been a citizen of the Empire. Kite’s words were harsh but entirely devoid of recrimination, as was his wont. Meruem turned away then, from those sharp, forbidding eyes, and for once the shame he felt was his own.

***

They finished the assigned tasks with 15 minutes to spare and only a minimal amount of complaining, and by then the _Zodiac II_ was at its shortest distance from the observation platform. Perhaps mellowed by caffeine and alone time on her ship, Krueger deemed them sufficiently worthy to be beamed on board the station instead of manually jetting into the _Aesthete_ ’s cargo bay to be brought back.

“Ugh, that still feels wrong,” Bine said, as their physical forms re-assembled in the transporter dock. “I can’t help but think I might be missing a chunk out there.”

“We’re going to be split into two persons one day,” McMahon said grimly. 

Zoldyck perked up. “Like a good twin and an evil twin?”

“In your case, how would we tell the difference between you and an evil twin?” Siberia said, rolling her eyes. Her gaze snagged on Meruem and, as usual, she stared back at him defiantly, as if daring him to say something.

He shrugged it off. Palm Siberia was born of an anti-monarchist Chimera, one of the traitors who defected from the Empire to join the Union towards the climax of the war. They were partnered together once for an assignment in their second year at the Academy, during which Siberia was polite but aloof. It rankled, a little, to know she wasn’t in the least bit afraid of him. Or impressed by him, for that matter.

As per protocol, they went through decontamination, and then the changing room. It was a relief to strip off the armour and undersuit — the Fleet changed its uniform designs with the entry of the Chimeras into the Academy, but there was still some way to go before the protective suits were truly comfortable for bodies with tails. He tuned out Freecss’s excited chatter with the ease of unfortunate familiarity as he showered and changed, letting the hubbub and laughter wash over him. Meruem was the outsider here, by choice. 

Siberia was drying her hair on a bench by the privacy cubicles as he exited, no doubt waiting for Freecss to be done. She gave him a cool nod, consummately professional with nary a hint of camaraderie.

***

He had an hour’s break before his shift began, so Meruem picked up lunch and headed for one of the few places on the station he felt any affection for: the Hanging Garden overlooking the main promenade in Central Habitat. It could not hope to compete with the lush inner courtyard of his childhood palace, carefully tended by the Empire’s best gardeners, but the mismatched flowers in the overfilled planter boxes and the cheerfully scraggly shrubs sufficed as a reminder.

Below, seasonal traders and their stalls competed for the attention against the permanent vendors ensconced in shops that lined one side of the promenade. Here, diplomats and tourists haggling for souvenirs rubbed elbows with privateers and guns for hire. _Zodiac II_ was rarely short of travellers looking to spend their wealth, and trade deals for the importation of goods were inked often enough to keep a large coterie of lawyers on the station employed.

A strip of steelglass provided a view of the stars and prevented the busy Central Habitat from being too oppressively claustrophobic. Meruem preferred to watch instead the people scurrying around, puffed up with the conviction that as the protagonists of their own stories, their lives meant something to the universe. This was largely untrue; the Chimera Empire at its height would have harvested them like a field of grain, their individual lives insignificant next to the sum of their parts as the raw fuel for conquest. 

The Captain’s evaluation arrived as he was finishing his tasteless sandwich. He pulled it up on his commpad and skimmed the contents: high evaluation scores for everything except teamwork, to which Krueger had added a few choice comments. Meruem was still top of his training crew, but only just. He stabbed at the screen viciously, closing the document.

“Rough morning?” intruded Security Chief Morel Mackernasey, parking his bulk on a neighbouring bench. Meruem hastily suppressed a reflexive, startled flinch. For such a large Human, Mackernasey’s movements were light and almost silent, like gusts of wind on a cloudy day. “Didn’t think you’d fail a simple orbital jump.”

“I didn’t _fail_ ,” Meruem said, and immediately wished he could snatch the words back when Mackernasey’s eyebrows climbed upwards. Even to his ears, he sounded petulant, hardly befitting his status. He added, stiffly, “I do not appreciate being held back by my teammates.”

“Hmm,” was Mackernasey’s response. He unpacked a bento box, which didn’t smell like much to Meruem but still looked marginally more appetising than a meal procured from the station crew’s mess hall. Mackernasey took the lid off a container of soup and began sipping from it. 

He thought they were done with the conversation, but it became evident that Mackernasey was merely gathering his thoughts. “Sounds to me that you might want to think about whether nursing your pride by playing the lone wolf is worth risking a career in the Fleet,” Mackernasey said. “Freecss and Zoldyck might not have your physiological advantages, but they’re miles ahead of you in making the kind of relationships that’ll have people willing to die for them out of loyalty. Arguing whether one person is weak or strong is moot when they’ve got a hundred people looking out for them.”

That stung. And Mackernasey was _wrong_ about him, but Meruem bit his tongue on an instinctive retort. “I’ll take your advice under consideration.”

“Enjoy the rest of your lunch break, Ensign,” Mackernasey chuckled. He stretched a foot out with a groan of enjoyment, brushing the tip of his boot against a clump of verdant leaves spilling out of a planter box. “Ah, the lilies are looking lush today. Shame only the orange ones survived.”

***

The rest of his shift crawled by with oppressive mundanity. He was on rotation for Entry Controls, checking passport after passport, punctuated by the occasional ship inspection. The only thing of note, if at all, was Dr Paladinight’s on-again, off-again lover “passing through” _Zodiac II_ a mere ten days after he last walked out on the station’s favourite doctor. There was a story there, judging from the burn across the bow of Kurapika’s ship, but it was nothing Meruem cared to learn. Kurapika’s letter of marque from the Governor of Nostrade was current and scrupulously authenticated, anything else was irrelevant.

Ensign Hanzo, barely hiding his glee, ordered the yeomen to inspect the ship but predictably found nothing — likely because Kurapika had already long purged any evidence of illegal activities. An irritating waste of time. In the end, Hanzo waved Kurapika through, the station crew’s informal intranet already lighting up with bids for the betting pool.

Meruem thought longingly of expelling humans into the vacuum of space. His next rotation was Security, and the prospect of having to investigate noise complaints being made about Paladiknight’s quarters was all but certain.

This small, petty life couldn’t ever be his purpose of being.

***

Komugi’s head was already bent over the Gungi board when Meruem punched the access code to her quarters, though she obligingly raised it for a kiss. Predictably, her dinner was already long cold and abandoned on the pantry bench. Meruem dumped it into the disposal slot of the food synthesiser and got out two new servings, one especially programmed for his dietary needs.

“Eat,” he said, placing the plates next to the board. “We can play through dinner.”

Her implanted eyes blinked at him, eerily bright. They sometimes discomfited her human colleagues, but had always put him at ease — they made her into a kind of chimera, after all, though with cybernetic parts instead of organic.

“Thank you, Meruem,” she said, smiling, and tapped the board. The pieces rearranged themselves into neat piles, waiting to be placed and stacked.

For a quiet moment, they busied themselves arranging the pieces on the board. He looked over at her side and raised his eyebrows, commenting, “You usually favour a standard starting arrangement.”

“I’m trying something new,” she said, chewing on a mouthful of food. She looked happy. “It might work, it might not.”

“But you’re confident it will,” he said, because Komugi’s modesty was both earnestly felt and in reality incredibly ridiculous. “Against _me_.”

She gestured at his side of the board in a sweeping, bird-like motion. “I’ll find out.”

What a find Komugi was, he thought, the finest strategic mind of her generation wasted in stellar cartography. When they first played Gungi together, she trounced him in minutes and then proceeded to repeat her feat until his skill improved. He still lost, and had never actually won a match, though eventually he could hold her off for hours. He’d wondered how it was that a civilisation that produced Netero could overlook Komugi’s brilliance — now he didn’t care, because their loss was his gain.

“I look forward to it,” Meruem said sincerely. He placed his hand atop hers and squeezed gently, feeling the play of muscles under her soft skin.

Komugi would make a fine Consort and, perhaps, even Queen. Above all: she would be the weapon at the heart of a new Chimera Empire, under his aegis. They would be _glorious_.

He just had to bide his time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: unreliable narrator; suicide; murder; consent issues (Meruem is genuinely hot for Komugi, but his pursuit of a relationship with her is rooted in a desire for power, which she doesn't know about).
> 
> In this space fleet, changing rooms are unisex because in a universe with diverse gender expressions and identities, I like to think that eventually we will learn not to see any body part as being inherently sexual, and also to see each other as colleagues and comrades in arms first. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.


	5. where the water was

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, this complies with canon up to the current chapter, but the likelihood of HxH playing out this way is approximately nil. Hence, I wrote this as an alternate universe.

Leorio lived alone in a single-storey house on a quiet street at the edge of town. It took him exactly 27 minutes to walk to the hospital where he served his residency, which he did almost every morning, traversing a path alongside a meandering canal. Sometimes he would stop to watch groups of children running over the footbridge, their shrill voices raised in laughter and mockery, but never for more than half a minute.

He did not own the house he lived in. Its poorly-maintained garden was the bane of his landlady’s life, who would command one of her numerous and interchangeable grandchildren to weed the patch of scrubby grass every other fortnight. She liked Leorio, though. So did his colleagues, who described him as “kind” and “mouthy sometimes, but has a good heart.” Leorio went out drinking with them once in a while, at irregular intervals, and laughingly deflected attempts to set him up with eligible singles. He no longer wore sunglasses, but kept the cheap suits.

All in all, Leorio’s life didn’t speak of someone setting down roots, but he seemed to have built a comfortable nest in this placid rural town anyway — like a roosting bird in winter, Kurapika thought, waiting for spring.

“I don’t know, boss,” Rui said, unconvinced, because Rui was the kind of person who instinctively argued against any stated position. “Guy seems pretty settled to me. But hey, he’s your friend. You want me to invade his privacy some more, or am I done spying on him?”

“Return to headquarters and wait for my instructions,” Kurapika said tersely, but he supposed he deserved it — and deserved what was likely going to be a door slammed shut in his face. 

He thought about bringing flowers, or perhaps a gift of something expensive and appropriately medicine-adjacent. None of them would entice Leorio to hear him out, though. In the end he brought only himself, a carry bag filled with necessities and a tablet, and one other thing, tucked into his suit pocket. He rang Leorio’s doorbell fully expecting to be turfed out into the summer evening, with Leorio screaming insults after him.

It might’ve been better if he was, because the wretched agony on Leorio’s face — now that they were finally face to face, after so long — was a knife to his heart. Kurapika had forgotten, or perhaps made himself forget, the difference between their parting after the Dark Continent and what it used to be like to be around Leorio. This Leorio wasn’t the same man whose faith sent Mizaistom to find Kurapika for the Zodiacs.

“May I come in?” he asked, before the incipient embarrassment he saw in Leorio’s eyes burned through his paralysis.

Leorio jerked back, his bare shoulders a long, taut line telegraphing _no_. But he said, instead, “Sure, make yourself at home. I don’t have any house slippers though, so, uh— follow me to the kitchen when you’re done taking off your shoes.”

Kurapika watched him from the kitchen table as Leorio busied himself making tea, darting from kettle to cup to tea canister and avoiding eye contact. He’d obviously been getting ready for bed, dressed down in loose pants and a threadbare sleeveless top hanging on his body by frayed straps. Leorio had filled out with more muscle, no longer quite so gangly, though his skin now had the pallor of someone who spent much of his time working indoors. Kurapika’s eyes followed the low dip of the shirt’s neckline for a long moment before he made himself look away, guiltily.

Leorio’s kitchen was much like the rest of home, from the glimpses Kurapika saw: sparsely and pragmatically furnished with an eye for thrift, everything meticulously maintained but passed down through several hands. It had to be a deliberate decision, because Leorio had enough money in his bank account to buy a handsome townhouse in Yorknew if he wanted to and fill it with luxurious comfort. The rare spots of bright colour in Leorio’s kitchen were the cups and dishes drying on a rack by the sink, and a small collection of magnets on the fridge door. One of the magnets held up a recent photo of Gon and Killua, lifting a gigantic carp between them.

“When did you visit Doli City?” Kurapika asked, feeling his way around the unspoken landmines in the room.

“What? Oh, the magnet — they’re all gifts from Dr Namani. She likes to travel.” Leorio placed a cup of tea before Kurapika, and sat down across the table. His countenance was entirely neutral now, his dark eyes coolly assessing. “Was it your agent who’s been following me around?”

Caught, Kurapika thought, as expected. “Yes. I... apologise if Rui bothered you in any way.”

Leorio sighed, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Why are you here, Kurapika? I know it’s not to apologise for stalking me by proxy, because there’s not an ounce of remorse in you.”

“To return something owed to you.” Kurapika reached into his jacket pocket and slid its occupant over the table: Leorio’s Hunter license, with its single star. “I _am_ sorry it took me almost three years. I thought— you’ll be completing your residency soon. Even if you don’t want it back, having a Hunter license opens doors.”

“Fuck you, you fucking _asshole_ ,” Leorio said, quietly. His eyes were wet. He stared at the card, hands clenched in white-knuckled fists, before abruptly rising from his seat. “I’ll put you up in the spare room for the night. It’s late, I won’t be held responsible if someone tries to mug you in an alley and you kick their ass.”

“Fine,” Kurapika said automatically, thrown by the abrupt change in Leorio’s demeanour. He left the card on the table.

***

Kurapika lay awake all night, tucked into a futon unearthed from the depths of a musty storage closet. He was sure that Leorio, a thin wall away, didn’t get much rest either. There was a loud thump in the wee hours before dawn, and seconds later, the sound of harsh, shaky breathing.

He tried to listen to Leorio’s heartbeat, the way Senritsu taught him, but he couldn’t hear past Leorio’s murmured mantra: _Calm down_. _Calm down_. _You’re safe_. _Calm down_. 

In the morning, he got up when he heard the front door close, and the clatter of Leorio’s shoes on the footpath. The Hunter license was gone from the kitchen table, but there was a note left in its place, written with a careful hand:

> Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. If you need to go out, there’s a spare key in the blue vase. If you’re leaving for good, feel free to make use of a window.
> 
> Leorio

***

Kurapika didn’t insinuate himself into Leorio’s life so much as treated his involvement in it as fait accompli. He asked politely to borrow Leorio’s laptop and claimed part of the kitchen bench as his workspace. It was entirely true that there was no other suitable space in the house, because the lone desk was in Leorio’s bedroom and buried under piles of textbooks, but parking himself in one of the most lived-in areas was a tactical decision.

He couldn’t cook anything worth eating for more than fuel, but he could manage to have coffee ready when Leorio stumbled into the kitchen groggy-eyed every morning, and throw packets of bread at Leorio’s head. Leorio still looked surprised every time, and reluctantly touched by the gesture. He watched Leorio’s deft hands curling around the mugs, cradled close to his chest in a mammal’s instinctive search for warmth.

Kurapika knew he was playing dirty — that he was waiting out the inevitable collapse of Leorio’s anger, and once he got past that thorny fortress, he had a clear shot at the path back into Leorio’s generous heart. In a better world this was something to be used against a foe, not a friend who bled for him, but it was the least of his sins. He knew too that the scum he’d waded through for vengeance stuck to his soul, and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

Leorio broke on the eighth morning after Kurapika’s arrival, slamming his breakfast plate onto the table and demanding, “Are you dying?”

Kurapika considered the question. “No more than I already was,” he said honestly. “I haven’t had a need to use Emperor Time since— since then.”

“I can’t fucking believe your nerve,” Leorio said flatly. “All right, on your feet, I’m giving you a free check-up.”

“You have work,” Kurapika demurred.

“That’s right, and you’re coming with me.”

The place Leorio was completing his residency in was much like any other rural hospitals Kurapika had ever had the misfortune of being in. Everyone knew everybody else and what ailed them, from the old man shuffling laboriously on arthritic knees to the family with downcast eyes clustered protectively around a too-skinny child. The nurses greeted Leorio with sunny smiles, and their eyes followed in his wake towards the new stranger in town.

Though Kurapika had to admit, his work generally brought him to back-alley clinics in disreputable parts of town, not well-lit buildings with cheerful paper cut-outs of sunflowers and animals stuck to the walls. A recent tussle with a disgruntled tributary of the Ritz family was a spectacular exception; he had to spend almost a week in a village hospital after running its last heir to ground in an unexpectedly well-armed summer villa in the Begerossé Union. He’d been sloppy about vetting intelligence that came his way, sick of the idiocy and too eager to bring an end to it.

He watched Leorio idly from his perch on the examination bed, listening to the muted bustle of the hospital around them. Rui was wrong: Leorio wasn’t entirely settled here, but there was a measure of peace in him that wasn’t there three years ago. Killua called him an old man when they first met, but it was Kurapika who felt so much older now, weighted down with regrets he didn’t want to name except one: that he’d have to pull Leorio out of this sanctuary.

“Unbutton your shirt, please,” Leorio said, all business. He’d brought them to a room with a privacy screen, and he drew the curtains closed with a sharp tug.

“No stethoscope,” Kurapika noted. No gloves either, perhaps Leorio was less leery of casual touch now, contrary to the way he’d been behaving around Kurapika. Or perhaps it was just Kurapika he wanted nothing to do with.

Leorio gave him a smile that was mostly teeth. “It’s your lucky day, buddy: you’re getting the hands-on scanner special for the low, low price of fuck-all.”

The touch of Leorio’s hands on his skin was a shock that reverberated in sparks across his nerves — Kurapika knew it wasn’t Leorio’s Nen ability, because he could sense that too, pulsing through his body. Leorio used to be so tactile, always ready with a pat on the shoulder, and crowding in close with zero self-consciousness. This was the first time Leorio willingly touched him in years.

“There’s still a blade wrapped around your heart,” Leorio said, sounding defeated. He drew back into himself, his ability winking out. “But you’re healthy enough, barring the years of life you’ve already given away.”

“Some things can’t be undone,” Kurapika said, and immediately wished he could reel the words back in.

Leorio looked down at his hands, deliberately relaxing them against his knees. Leorio’s hands were so lovely, Kurapika thought, not a single scar to hint at a time when they’d left streaks of blood in the soil of the Dark Continent — when Leorio had grasped at anything that could ground him against pain and insanity.

“Yeah, I already knew that,” Leorio said evenly. He was trying to be kind, far kinder than Kurapika would have cared to be, had their roles been reversed. “Just as well as you do.”

***

Leorio didn’t let his guard down, exactly, but some of the tension eased between them. Kurapika answered emails from his subordinates and presided over a few conference calls from Leorio’s kitchen bench, but carefully arranged for calls about Hunter business to happen after Leorio left for the morning. He had time enough to spare to wait out Leorio, and all the patience and care he couldn’t have given before.

Kurapika went on long, rambling walks into the countryside, trusting his navigational abilities not to lead him astray when he went off the maintained paths. The lakes and towering, shady trees reminded him a little of Lukso Province, and it felt— _good_ to be able to think of his lost home with affection as well as sorrow. The last of the Phantom Troupe responsible for murdering his people were gone, and he’d laid to rest the last remnants of his kin. There was nothing left for him to do except live.

He stumbled across the plague village by accident; it hadn’t been on any of the local maps — later, he was finally able to find it marked on a map from the Hunters’ Tavern, with scant notes on its origins. Kurapika observed the twisted limbs of the village inhabitants and the pull of deformed muscles on their faces, turning smiles into grimaces. They’d built a nursery staffed by the most able-bodied among them for their children — their much-loved children, the youngest ones free from the illness that had struck their antecedents for two generations. Kurapika thought he understood, finally, what drew Leorio to this place.

“It’s a blood-borne parasite,” Leorio said over dinner. He looked happy to be asked, gesturing expansively with his spoon. “We don’t have a vaccine against it yet, but if caught early it was relatively easy to treat, once we determined that’s what it was. I sent off samples to the labs at my university, they can figure out what the bridge vector was. A blood-sucking insect is my guess.”

Kurapika watched him carefully. “Are you staying here, Leorio? Once your residency is completed.”

“Here we fucking go,” Leorio muttered. He raised his chin, ready for a fight. “How long are _you_ staying?”

“For as long as I need to,” Kurapika said, meeting Leorio stare for stare.

“Meaning?” Leorio sniped back.

Kurapika made himself stop fiddling with his fork, and to put it down neatly beside his half-empty plate. He steeled himself. “For however long it takes for me to say I’m sorry and for you to forgive me.”

“Goddamn it, Kurapika.” That wasn’t quite the response he expected — Leorio sounded sad, rather than angry. “I wish you’d said that to me two years ago. A year ago, even.”

Kurapika’s breath stuck in his throat. “So you won’t—”

“I’ve already forgiven you, asshole.” And there was that anger Kurapika was prepared for, but not the look on Leorio’s face, as if his heart just cracked down the middle. “I’m just— so angry you waited, and how stupid do you think I am? I know it’s not the only reason why you showed up here with my Hunter license.”

He couldn’t deny what was indeed true. “Leorio—”

“Could you wash the dishes? I have— I have some research I need to finish.”

***

To Kurapika’s dismay, they were back to almost where they started: barely speaking to each other, walking around the ghosts between them. They were too stubborn to pretend at normalcy after an argument that wounded too deep, and not amenable enough to yield to societal convention of making nice and getting it over with. Kurapika felt scraped raw on the inside, his sleep interrupted by the sounds of Leorio’s own disjointed rest.

Leorio constantly drifted close though, seemingly unable to keep himself from seeking out Kurapika’s company despite the caution in his eyes that told Kurapika he was bracing himself for pain. He was always so appallingly easy to read, and easy to hurt if you knew where his soft underbelly was. It hadn’t taken long for _them_ to find out where to twist the knife, and how Kurapika wished he could use the term merely in its literal sense.

The weather was warm enough now to make the kitchen uncomfortable, humid and sweltering in high summer. They sat on the porch instead, trying to cool down in the evening breeze as they ate dinner. Leorio, raised in a sun-scorched, dusty city, merely stripped down to the bare minimum required for decency; Kurapika, an import from misty, forested valleys, fanned himself and thought meditatively about radical improvements to the infrastructure of the entire town.

Kurapika found himself studying Leorio instead, as he was wont to do. Did Leorio have all his scars removed? There were none on his long legs now, nor on his arms and upper body, at least the parts that were revealed by the torn, wash-worn shirt he had on. Just clean, sweat-damp skin.

“Hey,” Leorio said, over the heat-stricken singing of the cicadas. He’d put down his glass of ice water, beads of condensation sliding into a pool on the wooden floor.

Kurapika tore his attention away from the divot between Leorio’s collarbones. “What is it?”

“You don’t have to say yes. Because I might be wrong about this, even if I don’t think I am. You haven’t changed that much.” Leorio leaned towards him, closing the distance between them into something more intimate, electric with possibilities. “So I’m just going to say it: do you want to fuck me? It’s on offer, if you still want it.”

Kurapika felt his mouth go dry. If he was a better man, he thought, he would say _yes, but let’s talk first_. _Yes, but we need to deal with this unfinished business between us first_. He would have taken Leorio’s hand and kissed it, kissed Leorio, and said, _yes, but I want more_.

But Kurapika wasn’t a better man, and Leorio wanted him regardless, so he let Leorio lead him to the bedroom. They left piles of clothes on the floor with reckless abandon, though it didn’t escape Kurapika’s notice that Leorio carefully locked and bolted his bedroom door. Here, divested of all his armour, Kurapika could see that Leorio had kept the wicked scars on the inside of his thighs, thin raised lines criss-crossing each other.

Leorio went to his knees with an alacrity Kurapika remembered from half-guilty memories, but they made his stomach churn unpleasantly, so he concentrated on the sweet warmth of Leorio’s mouth instead. Leorio sucked cock like a man hungry for it, and he touched Kurapika like _he_ was the only one for him.

Kurapika laid Leorio out on the bed the way he’d always wanted to: hands pressed against the wall at the head of Leorio’s bed, hips tilted up invitingly. It was here that Leorio’s bravado seemed to abandon him, his breathing quickening as he tipped his head back. Still Leorio’s body opened around Kurapika’s fingers easily, and he didn’t flinch at the slap of their bodies together. He growled at an especially hard thrust, heels drumming demandingly against Kurapika’s back.

It was everything and nothing like a past that might have been. Kurapika fucked him ferociously, gripping bruises on Leorio’s skin, and didn’t think about the words he wanted to say.

***

Summer deepened into the first red leaves of autumn. Light Nostrade, put out to pasture in his dotage at his former holiday villa, began to make noises again about Kurapika formally adopting the Nostrade name. Kurapika ignored his rambling voicemails and missives from the Nostrade family lawyer, and concentrated on the unusual dip in profits from their operations in Nebaska.

He needed to expend little effort to maintain the business; it was a well-oiled machine by now, and was more than capable of surviving the boss’s countryside sabbatical. The emails from Beans, on the other hand, had to be dealt with immediately — along with the encrypted communications from their spy inside the V6. He was going to have to find a way to speak with Leorio about the contents in the tablet at the bottom of his bag, sooner rather than later.

It was tempting to turn the entirety of his attention towards Leorio, instead. And Kurapika did indulge himself, unconscionably delaying the inevitable conclusion for a little more of Leorio: to sweep his hands across the wings of Leorio’s broad back and learn the curve of his spine by touch, to commit to memory the raw, animal sounds Leorio made when Kurapika got him just right.

Leorio was a willing accomplice — and, perhaps, not an entirely unknowing one. His mood swung from enthusiastic to melancholic between one kiss and another, pressing his weight down on Kurapika and anchoring him in place. 

Kurapika remembered cradling Prince Woble in his arms for the first time, beholding the soap-bubble fragility of her life. There was a shadow of that here, the feeling of being handed something delicate and terrifyingly breakable. Leorio kissed him as if one of them would shatter if pushed too hard — was Leorio thinking of himself, or Kurapika?

***

It took a while for Kurapika to catch on to what Leorio was doing. In his defense, his usual capacity for cognition was comprehensively short-circuited by Leorio’s determination to take his pants off at every available opportunity. They had sex on every flat surface in the house, Leorio bent over and taking it, all the cussedness punched out of him. Kurapika even let himself be goaded into fucking Leorio’s mouth in a hospital toilet, fingers gripped tight in Leorio’s hair, hyper-sensitive to every sound of incoming footsteps outside the door. Leorio choked and teared up and went back for more, a deep furrow between his brows.

It wasn’t until he was washing up afterwards and staring at his wild-eyed reflection in the mirror that Kurapika said to himself, “What are you _doing_?”

For weeks after their return from the Dark Continent, Leorio had lain hollow-eyed and pale in his hospital bed, adamantly refusing to be touched for anything but the most necessary of tasks. He changed his own dressing, learned to navigate on a wheelchair on his own, and only forbore refusing Gon’s and Killua’s hugs by force of will. The nurses had lavished kindness on him, and Kurapika knew Leorio hated their attentiveness too, though he was always scrupulously polite to them.

Somewhere in-between Leorio’s discharge from the hospital and Kurapika returning from stamping out wildfires that his absence had caused in the Nostrade family, Leorio went from touch-averse wariness to being a bottomless pit of touch-hunger. It was Ging Freecss, of all people, who called Kurapika and suggested very, very insistently that he might want to look in on Leorio.

Kurapika had walked in on Leorio sprawled out on the living room rug being fucked within an inch of his life, and turned right around to walk away — until he heard that person call Leorio a name he refused to repeat but thereafter banned from his own band of thugs and miscreants. He’d broken their nose and stood over their unconscious body while he and Leorio screamed past each other, completely missing the real pain underneath. 

This was Leorio glutting himself on Kurapika, the same way he’d given himself over to anyone who looked at him up and down and said _yes, I want a piece of that_. Kurapika had done wrong by him then, and compounded it with every misstep after. He arrived at Leorio’s door thinking he had a plan, but he knew now he didn’t, not really — Kurapika was still missing half the story, one Leorio was in no hurry to tell him.

Enlightenment, he thought grimly, sounded much better in the books.

***

There were times when Kurapika could tell that Leorio’s mind wasn’t quite in the here and now. He usually moved past the stumble without a word, ignored the way Leorio deliberately slowed down his breathing and rubbed the inside of his wrist, over and over.

It was harder to ignore when he was inside Leorio, however.

“Keep going,” Leorio said, when Kurapika stopped. It was said with a distinct lack of real ardour. He might as well have been voicing a public service announcement. “I’m good, just keep going.”

Kurapika stared at him, appalled and suddenly, blazingly _infuriated_. “No,” he said, and pulled out.

Leorio’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me!” Kurapika realised he was yelling, stopped, and tried again, “There’s _nothing_ wrong with not wanting it when the person in bed with me isn’t enjoying it as much as I am. Don’t you dare lie to me. Please.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Leorio ground out.

“ _I’m_ not fine. I’m not fine with you treating me as if I’m only using you, and—” Kurapika faltered, feeling the anger drain out of him as suddenly as it overcame him “—I’m not fine with being your torturer. Again.”

“God, Kurapika,” Leorio sighed. He sat up, taking Kurapika’s hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”

“Don’t apologise,” he snarled.

“All right, I won’t.” Leorio was silent for a long, thoughtful moment, and when he spoke again his voice was soft, uncertain. “I really have forgiven you, you know. I can forgive you and still be angry at you — and myself, because we should’ve tried to have this talk even when we didn’t know the right words to say. I guess— I didn’t trust you as much as I thought I did.”

Kurapika shook his head. “It would be more surprising if you did, after— well, after.”

“Which “after”, Kurapika? The things we don’t talk about on the Dark Continent?” Leorio’s grip tightened. “You appointing yourself the judge of which stranger I should pick up in bars? Me telling you to fuck off if you weren’t going to fuck me?”

He kissed Leorio’s knuckles. “I did everything wrong, but— I wanted you to be safe.”

“I know. You did watch me sleep my way through every willing body within a 10-kilometre radius.” Leorio huffed a laugh and paused, running his thumb over the back of Kurapika’s hand. “You got one thing right: I needed help. I think… I wanted to prove to myself that I could still want to be with someone, after what _they_ did to me. That I wasn’t—”

“Traumatised?” Kurapika guessed somberly.

“Broken,” Leorio corrected.

“You aren’t _broken_.”

“That’s up for debate,” Leorio said gently. His smile was wistful, but genuinely given. “And it’s not all bad, you know. People aren’t things. We can heal. We won’t be the same, but we don’t lose our value as people even when we don’t feel entirely whole.”

“Leorio.” There was so much Kurapika wanted to say, but the words choked in his throat. He pulled Leorio towards him so they were curled around each other, and tucked his head under Leorio’s chin. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Leorio said, rough and unsteady. He stroked Kurapika’s cheek. “Are you going to tell me the other reason you’re here?”

“Tomorrow,” Kurapika promised. They could eke out a little more time, before the world caught up with them.

***

Kurapika wasn’t above stacking the deck — he was, after all, still himself — and so he ensured that Leorio had a mug of coffee in his hands before he slid his tablet towards Leorio.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on the V6 ever since we heard a rumour,” he said, watching Leorio’s reaction.

“Who’s “we”? The Nostrade Family?”

“Not them,” Kurapika said. “The Hunter Association. Specifically, a group of us who’s been steering the organisation.”

“The Zodiacs don’t exist anymore,” Leorio said sharply. Kurapika could see his thoughts reflected clearly on his face: _Most of us are dead_.

“True, they don’t. But it doesn’t mean the Hunter Association can operate without a leadership body.”

Leorio sat back, ignoring the tablet. “You’re reviving the Zodiacs.”

“No, we’re creating something else,” Kurapika said, remembering Biscuit Krueger’s words. “Something better. Because we _need_ to be better.”

Leorio’s eyes widened.

Kurapika nodded at the tablet. “The V6 is making diplomatic overtures towards the Dark Continent,” he said grimly, and saw Leorio’s shoulders locking tight.

Finally picking up the tablet, Leorio skimmed through the contents. “How did you even get this information?”

“The heir to the Kakin Empire owes me a few favours.” He drummed his fingers against the table, realised it was giving his nervousness away, and made himself stop. “Are you in?”

_You saved us all in the end_ , Kurapika thought. _Say yes_.

Leorio’s eyes squeezed closed and he ran his hands over his face. He looked exhausted. He didn’t shirk Kurapika’s gaze when he opened his eyes again, though, and there was fire in them.

“Yes, you asshole,” Leorio said, fond and annoyed by him — just like old times. “I’m in. May we survive it again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: trauma; PTSD; heavily implied violence and torture; self-destructive sexual behaviour; consent issues (impaired consent for reasons previously outlined); off-screen deaths; illness; recovery.
> 
> Sometimes I have to remind myself that Leorio and Kurapika would be in their early 20s during the start of the Dark Continent arc, and I'm writing two traumatised twenty-somethings who are not going to get things right at the first pass. None of us do, we just learn to touch up the memories of how tough it was.

**Author's Note:**

> These stories have been living in my head for a while, some for years. It was time to exorcise them, so here we all are. It's unlikely that I'll ever return to these universes, but if I do, which one would you like to see more of?
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
